Tuesday, September 22, 2009

Former CIA Agent Speaks Out - The controversial interrogation technique known as waterboarding, which the CIA agent says was used on [Abu] Zubaydah[see this Justice Department memo, PDF], occurs when a suspect has water poured over his mouth and nose to stimulate a drowning reflex as demonstrated in the picture [above]. (ABC News)

The use of such techniques appears motivated by a folk psychology that is demonstrably incorrect. Solid scientific evidence on how repeated and extreme stress and pain affect memory and executive functions (such as planning or forming intentions) suggests these techniques are unlikely to do anything other than the opposite of that intended by coercive or ‘enhanced’ interrogation.

O'Mara didn't actually study the brains of individuals subjected to torture. Instead, he carefully read the memos and then made inferences from the literature on how memory is affected by physical and psychological stress, sleep deprivation, and anxiety.

Stress causes heightened excitability or arousal in the brain and body, a perception that present or future events will be very unpleasant combined with a lack of controllability over these events. Experiencing stress causes release of stress hormones (cortisol; catecholamines such as noradrenaline). Stress hormones provoke and control the ‘fight or flight’ response (the immediate and rapid preparation by body and brain for action in response to threat) which, if overly-prolonged, may result in compromised cognitive neurobiological function (and even tissue loss) in these brain regions. Both the hippocampus and the prefrontal cortex are particularly rich in receptors activated by stress hormones. Cortisol binds preferentially to glucocorticoid receptors in hippocampus and prefrontal cortex, increasing Ca++ access, and thus neuronal excitability which will compromise normal physiological functioning of neurons if it is sustained.

Importantly, O'Mara then reviews specific evidence that torture is likely to produce the exact opposite of the intended effect: false memories, confabulations, and less accurate information.

Extreme stress studies in Special Operations Soldiers (Morgan et al., 2006) have found impaired visuo-spatial capacity and impaired recall of previously-learned information in stressed soldiers (who undergo stress, including food and sleep deprivation, during training modelled on the experiences of American prisoners-of-war). Brain imaging in persons previously subjected to severe torture suggests that abnormal patterns of activation are present in the frontal and temporal lobes, leading to deficits in verbal memory for the recall of traumatic events (Ray et al., 2006; Catani et al. 2009).

... Psychological torture (henceforth PT) is a set of practices that are used worldwide to inflict pain or suffering without resorting to direct physical violence. PT includes the use of sleep deprivation, sensory disorientation, forced self-induced pain, solitary confinement, mock execution, severe humiliation, mind-altering drugs and threats of violence—as well as the exploitation of personal or cultural phobias. The psychiatric sequelae of PT are severe. They include delirium, psychosis, regression, self-mutilation, cognitive impairment, and anxiety disorders, including post-traumatic stress disorder. Neuroscience research on these and related mental disorders continues to establish their neurobiological underpinnings, thus challenging the popular view that PT is not physical, not serious, and perhaps not even torture at all.

5 Comments:

The Bush administration and all Bush's war dogs used this inhumane form of torture under the pretense of interogation to fight terroism. It begs to question "who are the real terrorists"? The average CIA agent, who are mentally and physically trained to withstand torture, cracks in 14 seconds of this method! "Not torture" they said please get a grip! I believe Obama has yet to expose the various horrors and secrets of the Bush administration.

"Terror acts powerfully upon the body, through the medium of the mind, and should be employed in the cure of madness".Dr. Benjamin Rush, whose likeness is embosed on the official seal of the American Psychiatric Association, is considered the founder of American psychiatry.LINK

I've been tortured, horribly. Got a nice scar on my face to remember it every single time I look in the mirror. Torture is one of the worst things that can ever happen to a person, but I'm trying to make it one of the best, and you'll see why if you keep reading. You hear about tortures going on, but you really don't know just how bad it is until it actually happens to you. I was even beaten to death and came back to life in a pool of my own blood; that, was just one single instance. But then there's the act of prolonged torture, very cruel and unusual tortures, which I went through as well. It did change me into a more forgiving, kind, compassionate, loving, caring, hopefull, and thankfull person; however, I struggle each and every day with very severe mental disabilities. I can't even remember a lot of what happened. That's what severe stress does to you, it causes mental breakdowns, total lapses of judgement, reason, memory, everything that keeps you stable goes right out the window, because it's hell. I already had a full plate of mental problems to begin with, not to mention a physical disability too. But you gotta keep going, you gotta try to overcome. You can't give up hope. So I volunteer now more so than I did before. I give away money to any poor people who ask, that is, if I have any money, and I do it more so now than I did before. I give away food. I seek out opportunities to just try and make the world a better place more so now than I did before. You can't live in the past. You can learn from it all and be inspired towards the greater good, but the past is the past. Look for the good in the present moment and hold onto it closely and dearly. Everyday I go out into the world wondering how can I help to bring more happiness and joy into someone's life. The thought that I can help others brings me peace.

The torture of the mind in mind control operations now are part of the psychological warfare and biological warfare.This form of torture is nothing short of terrorism itself as the victim is subjected to humiliating and sadistic ritualistic torture that continues 24/7.Computational physics and computational neurosciences are used in inflicting pain with directed energies and suffering with radio frequencies,neurobattery,semantic stimuli batteries and so on.If they want to prove insanity by torture then the method is torture.

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About Me

Born in West Virginia in 1980, The Neurocritic embarked upon a roadtrip across America at the age of thirteen with his mother. She abandoned him when they reached San Francisco and The Neurocritic descended into a spiral of drug abuse and prostitution. At fifteen, The Neurocritic's psychiatrist encouraged him to start writing as a form of therapy.